AI-Driven Internet Searches Will Be Designed by Users on You.com

According to a story on VentureBeat.com, the world of internet search engines just got far more personalized.

A company called You.com has launched an open search platform called YouCode for developers to integrate into websites so that their users can find the information they want without being shown the information that other search engines push according to their advertising algorithms.

For instance, unlike Google, these search engines will be neutral in terms of the data returned from searches. The search engine was launched two years ago by AI-driven Radical Ventures, which recently raised $25 million to expand its abilities.

“Google has been dictating the results of your searches for all these years,” said CEO Richard Socher of Radical Ventures. “Search is powering so much of our lives,” Socher, a former chief scientist at Salesforce, told VentureBeat. “We make medical, business and travel decisions based on search. There’s so much that it’s hard to pinpoint a single one. …When you search on You.com, you can make a decision on something, and then it actually helps you execute that decision,” Socher said. “On Google, search and ads send you to secondary sites based on SEO (search engine optimization) results that just funnel traffic to a 24-hour cookie on Amazon or something like that. That’s not helping people.”

YouCode will help to give back control of searching to the users and the developers who integrate it into specialized websites. Here are some of its features:

  • Code snippets in the results: The right answer to a coding query is never a blue link — it’s code and explanations. Without leaving the current window, devs can find code snippets with easy copy/paste buttons right next to them.
  • Code with AI assistance: YouCode’s AI can generate code based on a search query with Code Complete, an app that taps into a large neural net to autocomplete any developer-related query.
  • Skim through documentation faster: Quickly read through documentation from AWS or developer-focused publications like “Toward Data Science” using the preview panels that summarize what is most often helpful from a source.
  • Access tutorials and academic publications: Apps from W3 Schools are great for beginners, but more advanced developers can quickly jump to more complex tutorials. In addition to Github reposts, they can discover great content from academic publications like Arxiv to dig into the “why” behind the code from the authors themselves.
  • Catch data errors faster: Validate any JSON file with the JSON Syntax Validator app right on the search results page.
  • Find colors: It’s easy to find the exact color by toggling with the hue and transparency scales. Copy the HEX, RGB, and HSV values to their clipboard to help find and use their color elsewhere.
  • Speed through websites: Access 13,000+ !bang shortcuts to go to other sites’ search results right from your search bar.

read more at venturebeat.com